Music instruments vary from the unsophisticated coffee can do-it-yourself drum to the customized professional instrument. My previous article analyzed how playing a music instrument can strengthen your child's skills for daily living and all through life. There are more rewards to playing music instruments that include enhancement of brain function, motor coordination, visual skills, and breathing techniques.
Playing Music Instruments Will Benefit You Throughout Life:
Enrich Brain Function With Music Instruments
1) Enhancement of brain function: Playing music instruments may strengthen the role of one or both sides of the brain. When playing a music instrument that necessitates playing more with one hand than the other (eg. violin), studies have confirmed that the opposite side of the brain (that controls that side) becomes more highly developed. This can also be expected to be true when both hands are necessary as the brain will increase in performing.
2) Improved Spatial Reasoning Skills: Another end result of playing music instruments is the significant progression in spatial reasoning skills. With all the visual-cognitive and physical components necessary to play any musical instrument, the spatial areas of the brain become very enriched. A study by the University of California tested young music students and the result was a substantial increase in their scores on drawing geometric shapes, copying block patterns, and completing mazes with an overall improvement of 46% in spatial intelligent quotient. These skills are all necessary for higher level math skills.
3) Enhanced Higher Thinking Skills: Studies have additionally been completed that have established that students taking music lessons for at least four years score exceptionally higher on verbal and math skills on their SAT's. This can no doubt be attributed to their ability to process information briskly, as is imperative in playing music, and their healthy dedication to achieve.
Playing Music Instruments Can Strengthen Fine Motor Skills
4) Improvement in Fine Motor Coordination: Playing music instruments requires being capable of adeptly coordinating where the fingers should go to precisely play accurate notes. Whether it is playing a keyed instrument or string instrument, if the appropriate fingers have not been utilized or placed precisely, then the incorrect note will be played. This type of fine motor coordination is essential throughout life for a great number of tasks such as typing on the computer, art skills, or operating a cash register, to name a couple.
5) Enhanced Fine Motor Strength: Any person who has tried to play the acoustic guitar can attest to the fact that it entails really good finger strength to compress the strings so the right sounding note is perceived. In general, all keyed instruments, string instruments, and keyboards involve good fine motor strength and if you do not have the strength to begin with, then you will without fail gain it by practicing your instrument.
Moving While Playing Music Instruments Can Enhance Gross Motor Skills
6) Improved Gross Motor Skills: Clearly this all is based on the instrument which you play, however some instruments like the drums can unquestionably enhance gross motor coordination. Both arms and feet complete complex, coordinated movements. Opposite movements from different sides of the body are also necessary lending to spatial organization of the whole body and added enhancement of brain function. Being in a marching band will also strengthen gross motor skills since you not only play your instrument, but this is executed while marching down the street or in a choreographed movement style.
7) Enhanced Motor Planning Skills: Motor planning is the ability to form a concept in your mind relative to what you need to do, planning out in what way to do this, and then performing the skill. As an infant this process may demand some time, yet by the time toddlerhood is reached this series of actions transpires in a period of seconds. For those children who have certain disabilities (eg. autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit disorder, sensory processing disorder, learning disability, etc.) motor planning a new skill can be highly troublesome since body awareness and spatial orientation can be very difficult to sense for these children. In order to gain a new skill the ability needs to be broken down into very simple steps, repeated a great number of times, tried first with a lot of visual feedback so they can see what their body is carrying out, and then changed in a manner that if an identical skill is required to be completed in an altered style the child will be competent in doing it. On the plus side, for almost all of these children as the skill is learned and integrated into their everyday life skills then they no longer need to keep relearning it. Playing music instruments can elevate motor planning skills enormously. Fine motor planning skills are gained when playing any keyed instrument, piano, or string instrument as the body learns which key or string to press without even looking and incorporates it into the motor memory. Gross motor planning skills are acquired when playing drums or the trombone or when playing in a marching band as the arms and feet need to recall where they ought to be and what they have to be doing.
See Why The Eyes Improve When Playing Music Instruments
8) Enriched Eye Hand Coordination: The ability to concurrently read and play music will greatly enhance eye hand coordination. Not only do you have to read the note and rapidly find the right note on the instrument, but this also needs to be executed at the appropriate time and held for the proper amount of time. A large piece of eye hand coordination is the brain's ability to visually search the notes.
9) Enhanced Visual Scanning Skills: Visual scanning skills does not just require the ability to use both eyes together to see the right note, but also to track or read the notes similar to a sentence as the eyes jump from one note or group of notes to the next. Reading music necessitates the eyes to without hesitation scan to the next note while playing the current note in order to rapidly maneuver through a song and play music that sounds uninterrupted and smooth. Any young child or child with a disability will greatly improve their visual scanning skills just by playing music instruments. The incentive to work on this skill is recognized when the notes are heard. The feedback of being able to play a song can be very encouraging.
Improve Your Breathing Skills Learning To Play Music Instruments
10) Enhancement of Breathing Techniques: Playing any woodwind or brass music instruments or taking vocal lessons will considerably improve breathing skills. In order to create notes and music with your instrument you have to breathe correctly from the diaphragm. You also need to breathe deeply in order to maintain notes, play a continuous melody, and to generate the lower notes which involves more lung capacity. Not only will this improve your daily breathing techniques, but it might have an overall impact on your general health.
As outlined above, the benefits of playing music instruments are numerous. Not only is this a pleasurable activity, but it can build up cognitive, motor, visual, breathing, and even social (as analyzed in the previous article) functioning. These obtained abilities can continue into regular life skills required at home, school, the classroom, or community. You can also find out more information on music instruments on my other blog posts.
What instrument would you recommend for students with motor planning deficits?
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